Shifter
by snufflesthegrim
Summary: An eight-year-old Harry meets Tonks at his primary school when she saves him from Dudley's gang. The two become fast friends and discover their magic and themselves together. Pairing undecided.
1. Alley

A small shadow darted down the alley, followed by a rampage of children, a corpulent boy at the head of the mob.

"Get the freak!" the leader, Dudley, shouted, as the distance between the mob and the lone child increased. "Get him!"

Harry Potter turned the corner and crawled behind a dumpster, breathing heavily. He was desperate. This horrible game had been going on for months now. Harry Hunting, Dudley called it. Harry had to run for his life or get beaten by Uncle Vernon and Dudley.

"Someone help me!" Harry whispered under his breath. "Someone, anyone? I wish I was normal." The malnourished eight-year-old sighed in defeat, dreading the inevitable beating that would come at home. No matter what he did, Uncle Vernon would beat him. One time, in an effort to please his Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia, Harry studied hard and was top of the class for one test. He got a beating for showing up Dudley. When Harry got the lowest grade, he was punished for being a dunce, like his good-for-nothing parents. Harry would rather have had good-for-nothing parents than his Aunt and Uncle.

From then on, Harry resolved to be the best he could be, and never sink to the level of the Dursleys. He studied all he could in the school library, and became fast friends with the librarian. He easily knew as much as those two standards above him, but chose not to show his intelligence for fear of a beating.

Deep within Harry, the young wizard's magical core sensed his distress and strained to break the first of seven bindings on it. Lost in thought, Harry didn't notice the nimbus of energy surrounding him, nor the gradual shifting of his striking features.

Mesmerizing emerald eyes faded into a dull gray. A jet black mop shortened into sleek light brown hair.

Approaching voices disrupted Harry's musings. "There he is!" Harry tensed in dreadful anticipation as a meaty hand dragged him out from behind the dumpster. Dudley's at face stared down into his disappointedly. "Oh. This isn't the freak. Who are you?"

Harry was stunned. Wasn't he the freak they were looking for? Oh well, might as well go with this game and hope for no beating. "I'm Hadrian Bellevue, and you?" Harry chose a name he wished he had. A name that Aunt Petunia wouldn't sniff at because it was "too plain" and "freakish".

"Oh lookee here, it's a teacher's pet!" Dudley crowed. "Who needs manners? Is it 'cause your _mummy_ said to use them?" Dudley's band of kids laughed sycophantically.

Given the chance to show off his superior intelligence, Harry took it eagerly. Adopting a posh and cultured accent, he sneered, "My mother happens to be dead, you blithering ignoramus! I thank you for your consideration towards my feelings. Good Day!" Harry flounced away, buoyed by Dudley's dumbstruck face as he tried to puzzle out the meaning of the sentence.

An older toady of Dudley's whispered the gist of Harry's remark in Dudley's ear. The corpulent boy swelled in anger, his face reddening just as his father's did. He started to charge towards Harry's retreating back. Just as Harry spun around to face Dudley, an older voice interrupted the confrontation.

"What's this, then? Break it up, boys!" They all turned around to face an older girl, maybe about ten, with bright blue hair. She turned to face Harry. Are they picking on you, then?" She turned back to Dudley's crowd. "Get out, all of you! Leave!" the girl screamed. The bullies scattered like dust in the wind. "Are you all right?"

Harry nodded stiffly. She was only trying to help, but he kept his newly formed mask of aloofness and stoicism in place. The girl sighed, "Fine. Be that way."

Out of nowhere, her hair shifted from a vibrant blue to a melancholy blue-gray. Harry's eyes almost popped out of her head. She saw his reaction and winced. "Did my hair change again? Bugger. Oh well. Hi! I'm Tonks!"


	2. Freak

Harry was, for once, at a loss. He knew how to handle Uncle Vernon's angry raging and Aunt 'Tunia's debasing rants and his classmates and adults and everything else in Harry's short life so far. But what Harry couldn't understand was this wonderful person being a freak like him. Magic was freaky, Harry knew. Then this girl had to be a freak too. Harry had never met a fellow freak before.

Tonks' exuberant voice abruptly derailed Harry's hopeful train of thought. "So... what now? Can ya just, like, forget that," Tonks gestured to her now hot pink hair, "ever happened?"

Harry stared at his fellow freak. She was actually talking to him! In Harry's eyes, this cemented the fact that this new pinkette freak was indeed a freak. She was talking to him!

Tonks noted her new friend's blank stare and sighed. "No, of course not," she huffed. "So, what's your name?"

Distracted, Harry murmured, "Harry Potter, the school freak. Pleased to meet you."

Tonks gaped in shock. "Like, the Harry Potter? The Boy-Who-Lived? Aren't you supposed to have black hair and that scar?"

Harry's mind blanked in the face of this onslaught of questions. He did have black hair. How could he not? Harry stumbled over to a nearby puddle from last night's rain and shook his head in denial. The face looking back at Harry must have been a resident of some imaginary watery world. There must have been something in that dumpster that caused hallucinations. That face in the puddle was not his face.

Harry prodded his new face, explored the face he was currently wearing. Gray eyes blinked intelligently back at the bewildered eight-year-old. Harry tugged on his new chocolate brown hair in utter confusion and abject terror.

He was going to be beaten within an inch of his life for this freakish stunt. Uncle Vernon would never let Harry be seen any different than his normal state of being. Harry had to fix this, and fast. He turned to Tonks, the only person nearby who seemed to know even a little bit about what was happening and how to fix it.

shiftershiftershifter

Tonks looked over at her new friend. He was staring at his own reflection in the puddle with a bewildered expression on his face. She watched him pull on his hair and stare at the mousy brown strands.

"Harry, what's wrong?" Tonks asked, stepping closer to her new friend. Her hair shifted to a curious orange.

Harry backed away from her, eyes darting to the entrance of the alley, planning his escape.

Harry yelled, "It was you! You did this to me! Change me back!" Dread seeped through Harry's being as he thought about the Dursleys' reactions to his new freakishness and the subsequent confinement to the cupboard.

"No! I mean, I can't, Harry!" Tonks cried. "Harry- I think you did it yourself!"

"Are you telling me that I changed my hair? That you can't change me back? Are you out of your mind?!" Harry screamed. He furiously pinched himself, hoping to awaken himself from this nightmare.

"Harry, I know this is very confusing, but you've got to stay calm or those bullies will come back here and find you!" Tonks implored Harry to think logically. She continued, "So what you need to do is imagine yourself exactly as you were. Picture yourself in your mind, standing in front of a mirror. Can you do that?"

A haughty reply came back to the frantic girl. "I am not an imbecile, Tonks. I am completely capable of imagining myself, especially within my own mind."

Tonks sagged in relief and disappointment. "I'm glad ya calmed down, Har, but please don't be that way! Talk to me, please." Harry nodded his assent. "Wonderful! Now push…willpower, I guess, into that image of the normal you. Become that image. It's how I learned."

Sleek chocolate locks slowly faded into a jet-black mop, and steel gray melted into vibrant emerald as silver-white winter melts into lively spring. Harry Potter was himself once more. The aforementioned boy heaved a weighty sigh, an amalgamation of relief, hope, and resignation, among myriad emotions that this eight-year-old child should not have known, but did.

"Thank you, Tonks. I'm really sorry I blew up at you, but I was really, really scared of what Uncle Vernon was going to do to me. Forgive me?" And Harry sent the unprepared Tonks a wide-eyed look of such innocence and hope that she could not help but smile.

"Yeah, I forgive you, you little shrimp," Tonks admitted, but then the last half of Harry's sentence caught up with her brain. "What will your Uncle Vernon do to ya? He's your uncle, for Merlin's sake!"

Harry suddenly found his shoes extremely interesting. "He calls me a freak and beats me up when he thinks I do something wrong but it's always stupid Dudley's fault and Aunt Petunia says I have a nasty common name and my parents were good-for-nothings and I don't want to go there but I have to and help me Tonks will you please-" Harry clung to his newest and first friend and broke down crying, exhausted from the trying events of the day. The little boy's disgust in himself for crying like fat, blubbering Duddykins only served to renew his tears with more physical manifestations of seven years of fear and pain and humiliation and hope.

shiftershiftershifter

Face burning, Harry lifted his face from Tonks' shoulder. He had just cried in front of someone, and a fellow freak at that. The intrepid eight-year-old decided to jump right into the issue.

"So you're a freak too?" Harry inquired innocently.

"What?" Tonks screamed. "I am not and will never be a freak! NEVER call me that!"

Harry, stunned, stepped back several paces and sadly turned to leave. "I'm sorry. I'll just leave now. I didn't mean it, if that helps any!"

"No, it's just… never mind. Why are you a freak? Is it 'cause you can use magic?" Tonks asked.

Harry hissed. That was the one word that would get him a beating no matter what. But she's okay with it, Harry's mind reminded him. Reluctantly, Harry faced his friend and nodded to her question. Tonks adopted an expression of surprise and loathing. Harry, seeing this, again started to leave, afraid he had lost his friend of one hour.

Tonks pulled Harry back to her by the arm. "Harry, you are not and will never be a freak. You're a wizard, a magic user. I'm a witch. And we're both Metamorphmagi or changelings. That means we can change our appearance like you changed your eyes and I change my hair."

Harry stuttered, "B-but Aunt Petunia said…"

Tonks sighed. "My mum can explain this much better than I ever could. Let's go, Harry."

Harry balked at the thought of meeting Tonks' mum. "Aunt Petunia will worry. I can't, "he said sadly.

Tonks retorted, "Mum can fix any problem. She'll deal with anything your stupid relatives can come up with. Now are you coming or do I have to pick you up and carry you like a baby?"

Harry, suitably pleased with Tonks' solution for the Dursleys' anger, ran after her as she began to walk out of the alley. Really, his pride wouldn't survive being carried. The horror!


	3. Andy

(I assume you all know that I, like many authors, am not JKR. I do not believe any further disclaimers will be necessary.)

I would like to thank my grammatically correct friend for making my previously grammatically incorrect writings grammatically correct. Thank you, dear friend, for your grammatical correctness.

 **Chapter 3**

Harry and Tonks walked to Tonks' house through the dappled afternoon light. Harry had never been in this part of Little Whinging before. All of the homes here almost radiated comfort and homeliness, beckoning him into beautiful gardens and quaint cobbled drives.

Compared to the sterility of number four Privet Drive, this wonderful street outstripped it in every way. There may have been some flattened grass and crumpled flowers, but the children in the front yard playing completely negated that small fault.

On Privet Drive, children were told not to play outside on the grass, for fear of ruining prized lawns and stellar flowerbeds. Houses were kept painfully clean, and a trace of dirt on Aunt Petunia's floors would bring Harry a smack with a frying pan and hours in his cupboard. Privet Drive, Harry realized, was not the norm in this town, but a veritable prison of dullness and the stamping out of creativity, number four being the leader in this sense.

Tonks stopped in front of a modestly sized house, breaking the comfortable silence. "So, this is it, Har. This is my house."

Harry looked upon the house of his first friend and stopped in awe. Number 7 Geulis Street was the most beautiful thing he had even seen. Ivy trailed up the small brick house, weaving and dancing into patterns unknown to man. Azalea bushes bloomed on either side of the short stone path leading to the front porch. Looking up, Harry noticed warm cinnamon shutters framing clear windows that twinkled and winked at the awed boy. And just in front of him lay a crimson door, a gateway into a new place both unknown and exciting.

Tonks, on the other hand, bounced right up to said gateway, threw it open, and announced with all the flair a ten-year-old could, "Muuuum! I'm home!"

 **shiftershiftershifter**

Andromeda Tonks was having a good day, if she did say so herself. Ted was at work and she had the entire house to herself, no wildly screaming Nymphadora or jovial husband to disturb her serenity. All good things must end, however, and Nymphadora was coming home now, like the whirlwind that she was. Andromeda's thoughts turned to her only daughter, and her lack of true friends.

The Tonkses had moved to Little Whinging several years ago, and Nymphadora had no friends. Any little boy or girl that little Nymphadora did like ended up coincidentally moving away after a year. Andromeda, known to most as Andy, hoped that Nymphadora would bring home a friend, and that said friend would bring back the grin on her little girl's face.

Andy heard her little girl throw open the front door and announce her presence to the otherwise empty house. She unfolded herself from an easy chair near the front window and went to meet her Nymphadora, hoping to see the cause of the happiness in the child's voice.

In the doorway stood little Nymphadora, hair cycling madly through the rainbow, and a short distance behind her, a little boy, maybe six years old, draped in a dirty and ragged oversized shirt. The boy had the pale and sickly look of those malnourished and a wary distrust in his bright emerald eyes that no child his age should have known.

A messy black mop covered the boy's forehead, and come to think of it, he felt like the one person Andy had only seen several times over these past few years, the only person who could understand her growing up. In Andy's mind, green eyes flickered to stormy gray, and opulent child's robes covered dirty rags. She whispered a name under her breath,

"Sirius."

 **shiftershiftershifter**

Harry watched as a pretty lady came up to the door of the house. She had kind brown eyes, like chocolate, and light brown hair that brushed her shoulders. She almost looked as pretty as that lady with the red hair that Harry had seen in his dreams.

Harry snuck up behind Tonks and whispered in her ear, "This is your mum? She's so pretty."

"Thanks," Tonks replied as she made her way up the stairs. To Harry's embarrassment she relayed the message. "Mum," Tonks started.

"Yes, Nymphadora?" the answer came from Tonks' mum.

"This is my new friend Harry. He says you're pretty," Nymphadora Tonks revealed unashamedly, only sticking her tongue out at Harry as he frantically shook his head, trying to get her to stop.

"Thank you, Harry. That was very nice of you. Oh, do come in!," ushered Mrs. Tonks in a warm, lilting voice. This was the voice Harry wanted his Red Lady to have. Soft and warm and nice, like the mothers of the other kids that played outside when Harry had to do chores. Harry privately wished she had red hair. The Warm Lady continued to an apprehensive Harry, "And please call me Andy or Mrs. Tonks while you're here."

Harry blushed and nodded, marveling at the unprecedented kindness he was shown by Mrs. Tonks. He followed an ebullient Tonks up the steps. The awed youngster was led into a spacious kitchen, trimmed in white, lime green, and yellow. A plate of cookies sat on the marble countertop.

Tonks didn't stop to marvel at the kitchen; she had seen it for years before. She instead zeroed in on the cookies, momentarily forgetting the rest of the world. Melted chocolate lay in pools, a beatiful aroma rising from the cookies. The scent grasped her with aromatic fingers, long reaching and well-loved, pulling the completely willing girl into its warm embrace. It guided her hand, helped Tonks reach for a delightful disc of gooey goodness when-

"Nymphadora! Control yourself!" Mrs Tonks reprimanded. Her demeanor softening, she added, "Would you like a cookie, Harry?"

The raven was shocked. Never before had someone, an adult no less, offered Harry something! He asked tremulously, "For me?"

Andy laughed. "Yes of course for you, you silly child. Who else?"

Harry hesitantly reached for a cookie, then paused, his hand hovering centimeters from the top cookie. Tonks was now watching, Harry's hand preventing her from admiring the cookies. "But..I'm a freak, Mrs. Tonks. My Uncle Vernon said so."


End file.
